While the original tale is not drastically different, there is a strong atmosphere of unease and anxiety that doesn’t exist in Tchaikovsky’s ballet: Drosselmeier gaslights Marie (Clara in the ballet) by pretending not to know about her experiences (of which he is clearly the orchestrator) and frightens her multiple times with his weird stories and nonsense poems her parents, too, threaten her with punishment if she doesn’t shut up about Nutcracker, and by the end of the story she is a disillusioned daydreamer suffering from depression and a potentially fatal infection. Transforming Hoffmann’s Kafkaesque dark fantasy into a charming Christmas fairy tale was enough to rehabilitate the story and introduce it to new generations.
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